Word: kaufmans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Young Eli Broad, a bright, broke, freshly certified public accountant, closed what proved to be his most important deal in 1956: in exchange for free space in the small Detroit office of Builder Donald Kaufman, he agreed to do the contractor's bookkeeping. Broad quickly sensed that rich rewards awaited anyone who could bring order to the splintered, untidy, often wasteful world of home building. Within months, the accountant and the contractor formed Kaufman and Broad Building Co. and laid the foundation for one of the industry's fastest-growing giants...
Screenplay by PHILIP KAUFMAN...
Director Philip Kaufman, here making his first major feature, serves up an eccentric, erratic mixture of subdued imagery, flamboyant dialogue and down-home movie corn. The movie remains a series of set pieces never made whole, and the ending invokes a facile and familiar irony. The yarn about "that last great raid" contains echoes of many other films and film makers, most markedly Arthur Penn (The Left Handed Gun, Bonnie and Clyde) and Abraham Polonsky (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here). Those are two decidedly congenial influences, however, and Kaufman has the ingenuity to spoof and comment on them...
...economical film maker, Kaufman never dawdles over an image. His editing is deliberately ragged, setting up the equivalent visual rhythm of a high-spirited, rough-edged folk song. Both Robertson and Duvall are a pleasure to watch in their roles. For all its flaws, The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid is the kind of first movie so rich in texture and invention that we can look forward to a lot more from Philip Kaufman...
...George S. Kaufman, Teichmann...